On my way out the door for breakfast — okay, a late breakfast at noon, what most people refer to as lunch — it was just starting to snow. I snapped this picture of the one lone rose left on the bush outside my backdoor:

As we sat inside The Shore Restaurant, chatting with Tina about how she planted walnut trees in Greece and harvested the nuts for Greek baklava with homemade phyllo, we watched the outside turn white. People walked in shaking flakes from their hair. Traffic slowed. My car disappeared under a blanket of snow.

After a slow, sloshy drive home, this is how the lone rose was holding up, less than an hour after we left it earlier:

Es ist ein Ros entsprungen,                          Lo, how a rose e’er blooming,

aus einer Wurzel zart,                                   From tender stem hath sprung.
wie uns die Alten sungen,                             Of Jesse’s lineage coming,
von Jesse war die Art                                   As men of old have sung;
Und hat ein Blümlein bracht                           It came, a flow’ret bright,
mitten im kalten Winter,                                Amid the cold of winter,
wohl zu der halben Nacht.                             When half spent was the night.

 

Das Blümelein, so kleine,                             O Flower, whose fragrance tender
das duftet uns so süß,                                 With sweetness fills the air,
mit seinem hellen Scheine                            Dispel with glorious splendor
vertreibt’s die Finsternis.                              The darkness everywhere;
Wahr Mensch und wahrer Gott,                     True man, yet very God,
hilft uns aus allem Leide,                              From Sin and death now save us,
rettet von Sünd und Tod.                              And share our every load.

 

(16th Century German hymn with Theodore Baker’s 1894 English translation)